Long, long ride.
“How far up—” Cajeiri began to ask, and the dowager’s cane hit the decking. Young arms clenched the car close; young head bowed. “One forgot, mani-ma.”
“Then one’s attention was not on one’s instructions. This will be a strange place, and no questions. Think matters through, young sir.”
One did not answer the boy’s question, no matter how tempted, in the face of the dowager’s reprimand.
One simply took that advice for oneself. A strange place, and no questions, indeed. No ability to ask. No words.
But hope. There was that.
The car slowed. The illusion of gravity slowly left them. Bren found his heart pounding and his hands sweating, a fact he chose not to make evident. Cajeiri, who had seen zero-g, restrained himself admirably.
Bren doggedly smiled at Prakuyo drifting next to him, at Banichi and Jago who, one noted, wore no visible armament, no more than the dowager’s guard—a peace delegation, Ragi-style; but he wasn’t sure they’d pass a security scan. Which was Ragi-style, too.
Doors opened. A handful of Phoenix crewmen met them, drifting near the doors. They had sidearms, but nothing ostentatious. They were there to operate the locks for them and to sound an alarm, one suspected, if anything went massively wrong.
“Good luck, sir. Ma’am. Sir.” The last, dubiously, toward Prakuyo. With a bow. Ship’s crew had learned such manners with the atevi.
“Good,” Prakuyo rumbled, as they drifted into the chamber, breaths frosting into little clouds.
Machinery worked and the doors behind them hissed and sealed, ominous sound. No panic, Bren said to himself, thinking strangely of the hiss of the surf on the North Shore. Sunset. Sea wind.
Pumps worked only a moment; and the doors unsealed facing them.
The air that met them made an ice film on every surface, stung the fingers. Prakuyo bounded along, catching handgrips, and the dowager simply allowed Cenedi to draw her along, while Cajeiri was quite content to help himself. Bren managed, teeth chattering, wishing there were a conveyor line.
Long, long progress, and one had the overwhelming feeling of being watched throughout, watched, analyzed for weakness, and the human in the party was determined not to show how very fast he chilled through.
They were arriving, finally, at an end, a chamber with a metal grid, and Prakuyo entered it cheerfully, beckoned them in and showed them to hold on.
Good idea. Doors banged shut, the whole affair began to move and spun about violently, under unpleasantly heavy acceleration to give them a floor, after which the air that came wafting from the vents came thick as a swamp, still freezing where it hit metal and condensed.
Rough braking. Cenedi supported the dowager, Cajeiri had to catch himself, and Bren just held on.
They weighed too much. The air was thick as a swamp at midnight. Doors whined and banged open on a dim, dank place, dark blue-green floor, dark greenish blue walls intermittent with deeper shadow—a succession of edge-on panels, the light so dim it fooled the eye.
A deep rumbling came from all around, and what might be words. Prakuyo bowed deeply, walked forward a step, and out of the shadows a distance removed appeared a solitary, cloaked figure, with Prakuyo’s face, and Prakuyo’s bulk.
“Stop here,” Ilisidi advised, and the paidhi thoroughly agreed: no one should go further, but Prakuyo, who walked a few paces on, bowed again.
Said a handful of words, it might be, underlain with thrumming and booming.
Stark silence from the other side. And as silently—more cloaked individuals from behind the standing panels, and more voices, more booming and rumbling until the floor seemed to vibrate.
Not good, Bren thought, standing very still, not good if Prakuyo left them. It was not a comfortable place, even to stand. He felt as if he’d gained fifty pounds. The dowager’s joints would by no means take this kindly.
But Prakuyo extended an arm toward them—beckoning, one thought. “Dowager-ji,” Bren said quietly, and moved forward a little. And bowed, as Prakuyo had. One trusted the dowager gave a slight courtesy. Their bodyguards, by custom, would not, until the situation was certain.
“Introduce us,” the dowager said, “paidhi-aiji.”
“Indeed,” Bren said. He walked forward a step, and bowed, trying to assemble recently gained words. “Bren,” he said, laying a hand on his chest. “From human and atevi ship. Good stand here.”
One hoped not to have made a vocabulary mistake. An immediate murmur went through the gathering, a visible shifting of stance.
“Ilisidi, ateva, comes, says good on Prakuyo ship.”
Ilisidi walked forward a pace, bringing Cajeiri with her, offering a little nod. Cajeiri, wide-eyed, made a little bow of his own, car clutched firmly against his ribs, and wisely kept very quiet.
Prakuyo, however, had a deal to say. He waved an arm and talked—one could pick out words—about the station, about going to the ship, about them, by name and individually: he talked passionately, thrumming softly under his breath, and walked from this side to the other, finally demonstrating his own person.
“Bren,” Prakuyo said then. “Come. Come talk. Say.”
Bren drew a breath, walked to Prakuyo’s side, and gave another bow to the one who had appeared first, the one Prakuyo had addressed. “Bren Cameron,” he said, a hand on himself.
“Good Prakuyo on Prakuyo ship.” Never using that chancy we . Never having found Prakuyo’s word for the same. “Bren, Ilisidi take humans from station to ship. Ship goes far, far. No fight.”
That other person spoke, not two words intelligible, and not thoroughly warm and welcoming, either.
Prakuyo clapped a heavy hand on Bren’s shoulder, a comfort, considering the ominous murmur around about; and Prakuyo talked rapidly—shocking his hearers, to judge by the reaction.
“Calm,” Bren said in Ragi. “One asks helpful calm.”
“Calm,” Prakuyo agreed—knowing that word, it turned out. And launched on an oration in his own language, his one hand holding Bren steady, his word-choice something about station and Madison, quite angrily—then something about Ilisidi, and Bren, about Bindanda—perhaps about teacakes, for all Bren could tell, and a torrent besides that.
There was an argument, a clear argument going on.
And one had to think that for well over six years neither humans nor Prakuyo’s species had made sense to each other, and that the reason they were all standing here in this fix might well have had to do with a now-deceased captain poking about in solar neighborhoods that weren’t his—it wasn’t just Prakuyo’s grievance; it was likely a number of Prakuyo’s people with complaints about the goings-on.
Prakuyo, however, let him go, and engaged in noisy argument with several others. Bren tried to decide whether it was prudent to get out of the way; but then Ilisidi moved, slowly, considerately, with Cajeiri, and Banichi and Jago found opportunity to move up into his vicinity: but a person used to the Assassins’ Guild noted Cenedi had not moved with the group—Cenedi had stayed back there with his partner, nearer the door, and most certainly was armed.
“Not come fight,” Bren interjected into Prakuyo’s argument, seeing tension rising on this side and that, and at a light tap of the dowager’s cane, wanting his attention, interposed a translation. “Dowager-ma, I am attempting to assert our benevolent intentions. They are discussing what happened here. Prakuyo-nadi seems to be taking a favorable position. But we have no idea what Ramirez-aiji may have done to provoke this: I am suspicious he, rather than the station, triggered hostilities.”